


i'm not your hero (but that doesn't mean we're not one and the same)

by amessofgaywords



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Lena Luthor Finds Out Kara Danvers is Supergirl, because reasons, lena needs a disguise, lord knows she won't take it herself, miscommunication as a plot device, so she pretends to be a nerdy college student, soft gay confusion, someone give her a day off, this whole thing happens because lena is a workaholic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-17 19:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17566199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amessofgaywords/pseuds/amessofgaywords
Summary: “I have orders to move you away from the conflict. Is there anywhere you need to be, miss? A friend’s apartment, or a place of work? I want you to be safe.”Lena pauses to take in the absurdity of the moment: she’s wearing clothes she hasn’t worn in years, standing on top of an overturned bus, surrounded by fire and smoke, and Supergirl is asking her where she wants to go like it’s a date andwhoops, no, don’t go down that road, Luthor.or lena needs to hide and lex is trying to kill her and somehow supergirl gets thrown into the mix.





	i'm not your hero (but that doesn't mean we're not one and the same)

**Author's Note:**

> i had an idea and it maybe got a little out of control? (in my defense, i really like katie in glasses.) anyway, here's this. 
> 
> title from i'm not your hero by tegan and sara.

In all honesty, Lena doesn’t quite know how her day ended up this terribly.  
  
It started with a lack of coffee, or, more accurately, a broken coffee maker, and while Lena certainly had the capabilities and the technological skill to repair the shot fuse in her French press, she didn’t really have the time, therefore by the too-early hour she reached her office she was distinctly not-caffeinated and incredibly grumpy.  
  
The day got worse when Jess reminded her that she had a meeting that morning, with a few smug investors who were just _aching _to remind her of the opportunities in the military markets L-Corp had pulled out of, and really, how many times does she have to remind them that _she is not her brother _before they finally start to believe her?____  
  
But she could have dealt with a morning of fending off xenophobic, misogynistic, and privileged old white men and not having coffee to drown herself in if only the first explosion hadn’t happened.  
  
It really wasn’t a surprise that Lex was trying to kill her again (when was he not trying to kill her), but targeting her scientists in a lab halfway across town was _crossing a line, _especially when said scientists were working on a absorption technology that would benefit the aliens of National City. Really, Lex was getting less and less subtle by the day.__  
  
Hey, at least she could cancel her meeting now.  
  
It’s the only positive thought running through her mind as she rifles through the closet in her bedroom in a somewhat frustrated rush. After the whole “lab explosion” debacle, Jess (and her security team, but mostly Jess) had insisted she go home for the rest of the day, since L-Corp was “unsafe” or some other given reason for her to sit around her penthouse all day and be useless.  
  
And even though she should probably just heed their words and keep still, she finds herself searching for a fairly casual disguise and leaving without her driver to make her way to her other off-site labs, the private ones, to check in with her biochem teams and see the progress they were making on some of the medical research they’d started.  
  
She looks into the mirror and scrunches up her nose, giving herself a once-over.  
  
She learned a long time ago that, when one constantly appears in public in fancy thousand-dollar dresses and six-inch heels, a pair of jeans and nondescript Converse can do one wonders in the façade department. So, she’s taken that to heart, and dressed herself accordingly.  
  
She’s wearing tight dark blue jeans, designer but not obnoxiously so, and her favorite pair of black chucks from high school that still fit somehow. She pairs it with a soft burgundy tee shirt, a matching flannel button down, hanging open and tied into a knot at the waist, and a grey snakeskin belt. She leaves her face slightly makeup free (see: she removes her eyeliner and red lipstick in favor of nude eyeshadow and a simple lip balm that tastes like Kara’s perfume would) (where the hell did that thought come from, brain?) and her hair down, slightly ruffled and messier than she normally ever lets anyone see, and, at the last second, removes her contact lenses and slips a pair of thick rimmed black glasses onto her face.  
  
The cold frames graze her cheeks, and the effect is one that just screams “nerd” (not to mention she feels like she’s back to the “science lesbian” she was in boarding school) but it works, since she barely even recognizes herself.  
  
Digging an old leather backpack out from the box in the back of her closet labeled _High school: never touch _(also conveniently where she found the glasses) and filling it with necessary papers, files, and USB drives, she takes her phone from the charger, straightens her glasses one more time, and makes her escape.__  
  
The doorman of her building doesn’t seem to recognize her, which only spurs on her half-hearted confidence that this ridiculous idea has worked. As a last-ditch effort not to be noticed, she retrieves a few dollars and a pair of worn, long-forgotten earbuds from the pocket of her backpack (there was a gum wrapper and an old chemical physics paper in there as well, _did she ever clean out her clothes pockets? _), starts her “extreme science” playlist and sets off towards the nearest bus stop.__  
  
She’s actually somewhat surprised the nostalgic ensemble works as well as it does. No one spares her a second glance on the sidewalk, either to glare at her (common) or stare in awe (not as common, but she has her admirers). She thinks she must look like the everyday average NCU student, on her way to class, caught up in her own world. The bus attendant even smiles at her when she puts the cash in the ticket machine, and it’s been so long since a random stranger (read: anyone) smiled at her that she thinks she should do this more often.  
  
Of course, the bus is as terrible as she remembers it from her days as a nonentity biochemical engineer, all disgusting smell and close pressed people, but it serves her anonymity well, and she finds herself oddly enjoying the pure insignificance she feels at the lack of attention she gets.  
  
She’s just getting to enjoying herself when karma chooses to rear its ugly head. The bus chooses that moment to rock, and as a large cloud of debris explodes the road in the front of them, it topples over.  
  
Fucking Lex Luthor, always up for ruining a good time.  
  
Thankfully, there are enough people in the bus that Lena’s pretty sure (like ninety-nine percent, she’ll test when she gets to the labs) she doesn’t have a concussion, but she can’t say the same for the people next to the windows when the bus lands on its side and the sickening crunch of bone on glass echoes in the small space.  
  
People scream, people cry, and when the weight that’s been on Lena’s chest since the bus fell over finally moves, she sees someone opened the emergency exit.  
  
When a strong, tan, distinctly _feminine _hand reaches down to help her out, Lena has an inkling who.__  
  
_Supergirl. ___  
  
It’s strange: she’s just rolled over in a bus, surrounded by however many people all screaming and crying for help, her hip is hurting and so is her foot, and yet she feels practically no fear as Supergirl easily pulls her up and out of the wreckage of the bus to stand on the cracked glass of the escape window.  
  
(She chalks it up to the near-monthly assassination attempts and they way they’ve assimilated into her life. She’s just used to close encounters with death, that’s all.)  
  
(It definitely isn’t the softness of Supergirl’s hand in hers or the warmth that radiates from the Kryptonian’s being like pure sunshine.)  
  
“Are you going to be okay?” Supergirl asks over the din of sirens and screaming, and Lena opens her mouth to respond when another crash is heard, and suddenly everything around her goes red as a heavy bulletproof cape covers her head.  
  
“Another explosion,” she hears Supergirl say into what she presumes is a comms piece in her ear. “I’ve got a girl here who I pulled out.” There’s a pause and Lena frowns. Does Supergirl not recognize her? Sure, she’s wearing a disguise (it’s a pair of glasses and a flannel, she shouldn’t give herself so much credit), but it wasn’t like she had died her hair or put in colored contacts.  
  
Supergirl moves the cape away as the smoke clears and says something else to the person on the other end of the comms. When she turns to Lena, it’s with apology in her eyes.  
  
“I have orders to move you away from the conflict. Is there anywhere you need to be, miss? A friend’s apartment, or a place of work? I want you to be safe.”  
  
Lena pauses to take in the absurdity of the moment: she’s wearing clothes she hasn’t worn in years, standing on top of an overturned bus, surrounded by fire and smoke, and Supergirl is asking her where she wants to go like it’s a date and _whoops, no, don’t go down that road, Luthor. ___  
  
She takes control of the moment and clears her throat, attempting to sound unassuming when she says “office building at the corner of Harris and 60th, please. If you can get there and back fast enough.”  
  
The smile Supergirl offers her is instantaneous and sunny, but reserved, not the compassionate, understanding grin she’s used to seeing from the caped crusader. Lena wonders if this is her public smile, if the other one is reserved for Lena, and she has to fight the butterflies that swarm her stomach at the thought.  
  
A second later, she’s wrapped in strong arms (so solid, so powerful and she has to resist an urge to squeeze) and is being carried in the direction of her labs and dropped gently on the sidewalk. Supergirl waits a moment for her to get her bearings and then salutes her (two fingers, _does she even know what that means _) before flying off, presumably to deal with the crisis she’d abandoned in favor of carrying Lena to safety.__  
  
She stops outside the door to get a handle on things (like the silly schoolgirl crush on Supergirl she’s been nursing since that first meeting) and make sure she’s alright. Her physical symptoms seem fine, thankfully, and her backpack is, miraculously, still on and unharmed. She came away lucky, only a few bruised limbs and a small rip on her flannel where the knot had come undone when the bus flipped.  
  
She reaches for her phone in her pocket (her headphones were lost in the commotion, and she finds herself missing the comfort they’d provided, the reminder of the security they’d afforded her back in the day) and checks the time. Somehow, it’s only just past noon, and Lex has already tried to kill her twice. A new record.  
  
She fishes around in her bag for her key card to open the door to the labs, fully intending to continue with her original plan for her day (or as original as a completely makeshift plan could get, but she wasn’t going to get derailed for a third time). At least, she is until she hears something that sounds a lot like ticking coming from the speakers in the lobby.  
  
There’s no one behind the security desk, so Lena takes it upon herself to hop over and check the security footage, praying she isn’t hearing what she thinks she’s hearing.  
  
Unfortunately, she is.  
  
The cameras in the basement radiation labs are focused in on a single table in the center of the room, where a protective biosuit lies in pieces from an unsuccessful test (Lena remembers that one, her team had a lot of fun shooting at her while she wore an enormous green exoskeleton that made her look like a bloody idiot, and now that she thinks about it, the real problem with the interface was the ion battery, and _she’s getting sidetracked _). Except in the middle of the remains of the suit is a large, black box, something Lena recognizes immediately as the black-body radiation bomb Lex had in development before she took over. She thought she scrapped all remnants of that project, but of course they’ve resurfaced, this was Lex they were talking about.__  
  
“Shit,” she mutters to herself, gripping her bag tighter and pulling up a window to the lab’s server mainframe, about to type in an access code when she hears a brusque voice behind her.  
  
“Hey! You can’t be behind there!” A security guard is yelling at her, and she startles, about to correct him, when she realizes what she must look like (bus crash and all that), and that she’s still dressed as a college student (more or less), and that she really needs to keep that cover before someone tries to force her into a safe house or something equally as ridiculous instead of letting her work like she wants to.  
  
She steps out from behind the desk and clears her throat, trying to sound less Miss Luthor and more simply Lena.  
  
“Sorry. I was just checking the security.” She makes a move towards the elevators, but the guard blocks her path. “No one was there, and I heard...” she points up as the ticking continues, growing increasingly louder. Whoever managed to hack her is good, not to mention very creative (and a little psychotic, but let’s just know that).  
  
The guard hears the noise, and his hand goes to his gun. “That coming from you? Hands on your head.”  
  
Lena throws her hands up, key card still dangling from one. “Absolutely not. It’s from the speakers. Besides, I work here.” She flashes him just enough of the pass to let him see the authenticity of the logo, not enough to see the name or face imprinted on it. “But if you let me down right now, I can disarm that bomb in ten minutes.”  
  
The guard seems to question it for a second before nodding his head towards the elevator. Lena thanks him in a rush, moving towards it before realizing a) the stairs are quicker and b) it’s probably not a good idea to get in an elevator when the building you’re in is under attack from a very skilled hacker (and note to self: she’s having words with whoever implemented the security system in this building because they did a very bad job and due to how well this disguise is working, she’s _clearly _a master of stealth).__  
  
She reaches the basement in minutes and the bomb in seconds. She’s really, really, lucky she has such dedicated (and occasionally terrifyingly menacing) people working for her, because all manner of things have been strewn about the table, and she finds a wire cutter and a radiation scanner in no time.  
  
Black-body radiation bombs were one of the only interesting things Lex ever did in his time as CEO, and Lena finds herself fascinated with the bonds and mechanics as she works to take it apart, keeping her movements in time to the ticking of the wind down clock the way Lex taught her (she should have suspected something was wrong with him when he taught her how to disarm a bomb when she was twelve, but then again, it was _fun _). She clips wires, deadens connections, scans for possible readings after every step, the movements rhythmic, almost relaxing (or at least they would be if she weren’t racing against a literal clock to not die in a fiery radiation-laced explosion).__  
  
With thirteen seconds on the clock, she clips the final wire, and the ticking goes silent. The hairs on her arm fall, and the readings on her scanner drop lower and lower with each passing second. A voice comes over the PA, presumably the guard from earlier: “nice one, kid, I see why Miss Luthor hired you.” (She resists the urge to snort.)  
  
She subtly slips the remnants of the bomb into her bag, planning to check it out fully when she has the time. The alarms in the labs finally turn off, and she uses the ruckus caused in the resulting confusion to make her escape, walking back uptown, taking a different route than her bus (no need to revisit that terror) (it has nothing to do with the fact that Supergirl is probably still there) (none at all) and passing by a Chinese place she once stopped at with Kara to get food (almost dying three times makes a girl hungry) before going home. By the time she gets to her penthouse, she wants to fall onto her couch and die.  
  
But first, she showers, because she has explosion and fire and bus accident practically written into her DNA at this point and she really wants to _not _smell like gunpowder gone bad for the rest of the night.__  
  
Then she plants herself firmly on the couch in fuzzy Supergirl pajamas and a soft black tee shirt, and eats her takeout and her ice cream while watching the news.  
  
The networks pick up on the same details she did, with slightly less information: the attacks followed a route, used advanced, unmarketed technology, and occurred very close in time and proximity to one another. The anchors come to the same conclusion: Lex did it, though no one is sure how.  
  
Lena fiddles with the glasses still lying on her coffee table, the glasses that probably helped her save lives. It was somewhat amazing, what a simple pair of plastic frames and prescription glass could do to people’s brains.  
  
Then the doorbell rings. Quickly, she hides the glasses under a pillow, straightens her still-wet hair, and goes to answer it.  
  
She expects her head of security, angry at her for leaving work without notice when someone was trying to kill her, or Jess, angry she survived so that she can’t kill her herself.  
  
She does not expect Kara Danvers, holding a pizza box and wearing a frown.  
  
“Lena,” she says, breathes it like a sigh of relief, and Lena sags against the door, because it’s just Kara and she’s _tired _from today, even though she won’t tell anyone that, and she feels warm and soft and _safe _all of a sudden.____  
  
“Hey, Kara,” she smiles at the reporter, moves aside to let her in, and Kara steps into the warm penthouse gingerly, holding up the pizza in an offering.  
  
“I brought... food.” She catches sight of the Chinese on the coffee table and frowns. “Oh. You already ate.”  
  
“No.” Lena is surprised at her own blunt almost-shout, the odd innate desire she has to wipe that stupid pout off of Kara’s face. “I mean, I did, but I’m up for more.” (No matter that she would never eat this much food for anyone other than Kara.) “It’s been... a long day.”  
  
And she means to tell her the whole story, she really does, but Kara says, “yeah, with Lex attacking your labs, I’d think so,” and she realizes that her own best friend doesn’t even know where she was today.  
  
It’s freeing somehow, being anonymous in a city where her name is on half the buildings. The fact that, were she only to don a certain outfit, she could go anywhere, loose from the bonds and ties that made up the infamous Lena Luthor persona. She could shed that, all that she’d built for years, dodge the media and the press and business associates and the sleazy men and just be _Lena _for a little while. It’s been so long since she’d done that.__  
  
And she loves K- loves Kara’s presence, she really does, but it’s nice to know she has a fresh start, should she ever need one again. She has that opportunity.  
  
She doesn’t want to ruin it.  
  
So instead, she says, “yes, I had to run interference all day. Thankfully, we didn’t lose anyone, and the work was saved. And the second bomb was stopped by...” she pauses, trying to find a convincing lie deep in her brain, “a helpful employee.” (It’s not technically untrue, she tells herself: she was helpful, and she still is an employee, really).  
  
“Sounds awful,” Kara says, shrugging and holding out the pizza again, almost as if in apology. “Pizza therapy? I got it with pineapples and spinach, so it’s sort of healthy.”  
  
Lena feigns offence. “Green on pizza? Has my Kara been replaced by an alien?”  
  
She attributes the blush that passes over Kara’s cheeks on her embarrassment at being called out and not Lena’s obvious flirting.  
  
“No, I’m still me. I just wanted you to be happy.” She says it with such reverence that Lena’s eyes burn, and she heads into the kitchen to grab some wine and two glasses so Kara doesn’t see.  
  
“Well, thank you for that,” Lena says, coming back to find Kara on the couch, box open and slice of pizza (she really did get pineapple and spinach, Lena’s favorite) halfway to her mouth. “We know my day was atrociously bad, so how was yours?”  
  
Kara shrugs. “Fine. Busy. I’m tired.” Lena nods in silent agreement and changes the channel from the news, still showing clips of Supergirl’s bus rescue (it’s making Kara squirm for some reason), to a cheesy rom-com that they both get far too invested in.  
  
It’s the second time that day she feels comfortable being just _Lena. ___  
  
(It’s cheesy, but she thinks that maybe she doesn’t need to put on a disguise to just be _Lena _after all.)__  
  
Lena spends the whole night trying to avoid talking about the day’s events, and she wonders if Kara really believes that Lena wasn’t around the bus attack or the bomb at the lab, especially when she presses (again) to ask why Lena wasn’t at her office during the time. Thankfully, she knows the reporter trusts her enough not to assume she was the one who caused the attacks, but she also now has to scramble for an explanation for why she disappeared for a few hours.  
  
At least Kara buys “I was hunkered down here under orders from security.”  
  
The blonde seems anxious for some reason, a bit off, and Lena is eventually able to pull out of her that she met someone interesting that day, someone intriguing and cute who she knew she was never going to see again, and it made her restless.  
  
Lena, because she’s weak and a sadist, asks for more details.  
  
Kara doesn’t explain how they met, only that the person was “adorable, and funny, and brave, and she was _just so pretty, _Lena!”__  
  
Lena’s heart stutters on the pronoun, the way it does whenever she allows herself to gain hope that whatever this... thing is, between them, can ever gain more traction than it has. But she’s kidding herself, and even if Kara does like girls, she’s clearly attached to this one she met (whose name she doesn’t even know, it’s quite the ridiculous little Cinderella story, actually). All she knows is that she wears glasses, rides the bus, and is righteous and brave (Kara’s opinion).  
  
The reporter goes home that night full of laughter and warmth, and leaves Lena with a parting hug that leaves her more sated even than all of the food they’ve eaten during the night.  
  
One week passes, and Lena genuinely starts to believe Kara has no idea she was ever anywhere _near _the bus system that day (not that Lena Kieran “youngest billionaire in America” Luthor would ever ride the bus, but still).__  
  
They have brunch twice, one their normal Wednesday meeting at a Vietnamese fusion place that serves healthy potstickers, a perfect blend of their two tastes, and Lena spends the whole time trying, really hard, not to just blurt out what happened, especially when Kara updates her on the Lex situation (since her sister is in the FBI, she’s apparently privy to these things) (she thought the FBI were supposed to be confidential, but whatever, she understands not being able to say no to that face, too). She wonders, idly, a few times, if this is what Supergirl feels like, the perverse need to tell everyone who she is even remotely close to who she is all the time. Keeping secrets like this, especially from Kara, is _exhausting, _and by the time the blonde reporter shows up on Friday with impromptu greasy takeout and a side salad for Lena, she really wants to just replay the news and show her the black-body bomb still encased in her leather backpack, securely tucked in her safe at home, and let her figure it out for herself.__  
  
“So… Alex told me that Maggie told her that the NCPD is close to finding whoever keeps targeting you.” Kara says conspiratorially while shoving potstickers into her mouth. “Apparently, it's not connected to Lex, like you thought. At least not outwardly.”  
  
“That's a relief,” Lena says, sipping from her scotch and rubbing her temples. Her Friday has been filled with meetings with her CFO and engineering officers to discuss the damage caused by the attacks and slightly-less-high-stakes-but-still-stressful PR meetings, where her head of security came very, very close to finding out where Lena was the previous week, where she was _decidedly _not supposed to be.__  
  
“Yeah, Maggie said that it was a free agent, maybe one of the people who used to be connected to Cadmus before your mom was caught.”  
  
“That would make sense, I did see what used to be their logo on that bomb…” Lena doesn't even realize she's said the thought out loud (her brain just doesn’t... work, around Kara? It’s a thing), until Kara’s staring at her with wide eyes.  
  
“What?” She asks, and Lena’s internal panic meter ticks slowly upwards. _How the hell does Supergirl do this? ___  
  
“I- uh. I mean- well, I suppose it's… I was there, okay?” Lena’s willpower has nothing on Kara’s stupidly pretty (and very confused) face. “I was on the bus when it happened. Supergirl pulled me out and brought me to the labs. I was dressed differently; she thought I was a scientist. That's how I found the bomb.”  
  
“Supergirl… pulled you out of the bus… and brought you to the labs.” Kara seems to be having a terrible time processing this.  
  
“Yes, that's right. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner, but, well… I just didn't want anyone to know. I went out like that to retain some level of anonymity, and letting anyone know it was really me in the crash would result in a press storm my PR team would forever hate me for, not to mention I’d have to explain why I essentially broke into my own labs to disengage a bomb,” Lena explains, frowning at the lack of expression on Kara’s face. “I'm really sorry, Kara. I breached your trust, I know.”  
  
“No, I... It- it’s fine, I swear...” Kara’s still lost in her own brain, not paying attention. “You said Supergirl pulled you out of the bus?” Lena nods solemnly. “And you were dressed weird? Like, what? What were you wearing?”  
  
Lena raises an eyebrow. _Why does she need to know what I was wearing? Is she that bad at flirting? _“I had on a burgundy flannel shirt, jeans, a pair of... black sneakers? I think? And my... my old glasses.”__  
  
“Glasses.” Kara breathed out. “They always told me they were a terrible disguise.”  
  
“Excuse me?” Lena asked, now thoroughly confused.  
  
“Alex... always told me glasses were a terrible disguise.” Kara’s standing now, waving her hands wildly. “Maggie too, but Clark insisted, said that they helped him...”  
  
“What are you talking about?” Lena watches Kara worriedly, concerned for her friend and the clear panic in her voice.  
  
“I told you I met someone, when we hung out that night, right?” When Lena nods slowly, Kara moves on. “I did. I met someone, and she was wearing a flannel, and jeans, and a pair of black sneakers, and glasses.” She steps forward. “And she had black hair just like yours, and eyes the exact same shade of blue-green, and I didn’t even realize it until this moment, but that girl was you.”  
  
Lena’s too busy blushing to realize what Kara’s saying. Kara thought she was pretty. _Her. _Lena Luthor, self-proclaimed “piner from afar,” who was pretty sure she’d been crushing on her best friend since they’d first met. Kara thought she was pretty, and she wanted to get to know her more, if her comments from that night had meant anything more than the infatuated ramblings of some beguiled girl.__  
  
“You... I was the...” Her brain isn’t comprehending anything other than _pretty _and _Kara. _She splutters, unable to think as Kara keeps talking.____  
  
“ _Yes _, you were, but that’s not important, because if the glasses worked for you, then they worked for me, too.”__  
  
“I don’t understand, Kara,” and she really doesn’t. She doesn’t get the nuances and the metaphors and the riddles (English always was her worst subject). She wants facts, and she wants them now, because Kara’s starting to freak her out.  
  
Almost as soon as she says that, it clicks in her mind: the only person she really talked to while she was out that day (besides the security guard, but she was fairly sure that he didn’t count) was Supergirl. And if Kara had seen her then, too, that meant… Kara was...  
  
“Supergirl,” Lena breathes, as Kara opens her mouth, presumably to say the same thing.  
  
“Yes,” Kara says with the same breathless tone. “I’ve wanted to tell you for so long, I swear, but there’s Alex, and there are forms, and... oh, Rao, no, it was never about the Luthor thing, I’d never want you to think that, but, well... oh, _Rao, _I was just... I liked being just Kara with you, okay? I liked that you didn’t expect anything from me, that I could just be myself with you, and-”__  
  
“Kara.” Lena stops her with a sharp look, and Kara’s jaw shuts with an almost audible snap. “Please. I understand.” It’s taking her a minute, to wrap her head around the whole thing: Kara is Supergirl, Supergirl is Kara, she likes Kara, she likes Supergirl, she likes Supergirl and Kara, Kara likes her, Supergirl likes her...  
  
Lena stands and walks slowly forward until she faces Kara, looking up just a bit to reach her eyes.  
  
“Do you, really, though, because I can explain more...”  
  
“I do.” Lena chuckles, because it’s all, finally, starting to make sense. “I liked being just Lena with you, too. You’re important to me, your friendship is important to me.”  
  
Kara’s face falls, and Lena hopes, _prays, _that she knows the reason why.__  
  
And hell, so many secrets have been shared today, let’s make it one more.  
  
“Your friendship is important to me, which is why there are some things that I haven’t told you, because I was afraid they would ruin it.” Kara sucks in a breath, and Lena realizes dimly that she can probably hear her heartbeat and how fast it’s going, but she doesn’t have the brain power to spare to be embarrassed. “Were you serious, when you said you liked the girl you met at the bus crash?”  
  
Kara simply nods. “Dead serious.”  
  
“Good,” Lena says, then leans forward to finally, finally, connect their lips.  
  
It’s perfect, everything she ever dreamed it would be. It’s like a black-body bomb is exploding inside of her body, every nerve ending set on fire by Kara’s lips, hands, tongue, teeth. She expects it to be chaste, but this is _Kara, _and nothing is ever how she expects it to be, and she’s on her back on her couch before she can help it.__  
  
Kara brackets her hips with her thighs and places warm hands on her shoulders, and Lena winds her hands into Kara’s hair and tugs, just a little, but Kara makes a delicious sound that makes her want to do it again, and again, and again until that sound is all she can hear.  
  
Except they’re at work and Jess could literally walk in at any time and this a very, very bad idea.  
  
So as much as she doesn’t want to, Lena reluctantly pulls away from Kara’s lips (it’s difficult, they’re like heroin, the more she has, the more she wants) and murmurs “I love this, but we should probably continue it later.”  
  
Kara rolls her hips, subtly, and Lena bites her lip to suppress a moan. “I think we’re fine right here,” she whispers against Lena’s jawline, lips tracing intricate patterns across her skin.  
  
Lena rolls her eyes (the pleasure might do it for her, she’s not really sure at this point). “ _I _think I don’t want our first time to be on the couch in my office.”__  
  
Kara blushes and lets out an undignified (absolutely adorable) little squeak, and Lena chuckles as the blonde pushes back and slips off the couch, allowing Lena to stand and fix her skirt, wiping stray lipstick off of Kara’s face with the pad of her thumb.  
  
“How about later tonight?” Lena asks, and Kara’s face lights up like a kid on Christmas.  
  
So later that night, they have their first date in Lena’s kitchen, eating pizza, half meat lovers and half pineapple and spinach (Kara admitted, just barely, that she sort of liked the combination, and Lena doesn’t even bother to be embarrassed at her loud crow of victorious laughter). Kara wears her hair down and leaves her glasses at home (and also flies over and terrifies Lena when she knocks on the balcony instead of the front door) and Lena, after much pleading, wears her glasses and a flannel, and, very reluctantly, the Supergirl pajama pants.  
  
“I regret purchasing these, now,” she grumbles as Kara traces her fingers over the patterns on her thigh.  
  
“No, you don’t,” Kara says as she leans in to kiss her again, just because she can.  
  
“No, I don’t,” Lena acquiesces, accepting Kara’s open kiss with eager enthusiasm.  
  
They make out and watch movies and make out some more and it’s the best, most stress-free night Lena’s had in a while. She assumes Kara feels the same, from the way she happily goads about being off of work for a night. When Lena questions, she answers with a very vague “Alex is handing it” that has Lena wondering what exactly Alex does for a living.  
  
They stay up until an ungodly hour simply talking. Kara tells Lena about Krypton about her old city and culture and family, and Lena is all too happy to listen. She’s so much freer, now that there are no more secrets, not holding anything back. And somehow, inexplicably, Lena understands exactly how she feels. It’s exactly why, when she asks why Lena tried to hide that day, she answers her.  
  
“It’s the same reason you keep being Kara Danvers,” Lena shrugs. “I wanted that normalcy. It’s not just being a CEO, but also a Luthor. Eyes are on me no matter where I go. I wanted to... escape that, and the attacks gave me a chance.” She twists her mouth in amusement. “I wasn’t expecting it to work _quite _as well as it did.”__  
  
Kara burrows her face in Lena’s neck and kisses the exposed skin there. “Well, glasses are a fantastic disguise.”  
  
“Yeah, they are,” Lena laughs, and just like that they’re back to kissing.  
  
\---  
  
Their first real dinner date, outside of one of their apartments, Lena wears her glasses and dresses down. There are no photographs, no emergencies, no angry civilians.  
  
She thinks she could get used to this anonymity, but really, she could get used to the soft way Kara smiles at her across the table.  
  
And maybe the way she pins her to the door the second they get home. That’s not half bad either.


End file.
